The Free Mountaineer

A Daughter’s Regret

Suzanna Gratia Hupp will live the rest of her life with regret. Had she been carrying her gun the day a madman executed her parents while she cowered helplessly and then fled, she is convinced she could have stopped one of the worst massacres in U.S. history.

She has told the story many times over. Tomorrow she will relate it again before advocates of gun rights in a counter-rally to the Million Mom March. Put yourself in her shoes, she asks, and then think again whether gun control is the answer.

It was October 1991 when an unemployed merchant seaman drove his pickup truck into a Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., leaped out and opened fire. He killed 23 people and wounded more than 20.

Hupp and her parents were having lunch in the restaurant when the shooting started. Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, but she had left it in the car. Her father tried to rush the gunman and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window, thinking her
mother was behind her.

But Hupp’s mother had crawled alongside her dying husband of 47 years to cushion his head in her lap. Police later told Hupp they saw her mother look up at the gunman standing over her, then bow down before he shot her in the head.

“I’d like people to think about what happened to me, and try to place themselves in that situation,” Hupp said yesterday between a string of interviews in which she relived the tragedy as Exhibit A in her argument against restrictive gun laws. “Now, instead of thinking of their parents, have it be their children.

“Even if you choose not to have a gun, as the bad guy who ignored all the laws is getting close to you and as he levels that firearm at one of your children, don’t you hope the person next to you has chosen to carry a gun and knows how to use it?”

The story is powerful, and not only because the question assaults the brain and invites no easy answers. With its implied alternative of an armed Hupp gunning down the bad guy before he gets too far, the story invokes the American legend of the frontier lawman who acts alone to thwart evil.

Unable to don that mantle when it could have saved her parents, Hupp, now 40, has been trying ever since to rally people against gun control.

When Texas debated the issue of concealed weapons in 1995, she strolled around the table at a committee hearing molding her fingers into a gun that she aimed at state senators. The next year, she ran as a Republican and won election as a state representative, an office she still holds.

She has promoted other issues, such as water rights. But her personal story trumps all other issues. For years, the National Rifle Association paid her expenses as she traveled the country testifying in favor of gun rights. Her story always commands attention. Before the massacre at Luby’s cafeteria, nothing in Hupp’s background suggested that she would become so closely associated with gun rights.

She was raised in central Texas, the middle of three children. Her father, Al, owned a heavy equipment store. Her mother, Ursula, was a homemaker.

Al Gratia was a man so gentle he didn’t hunt and even quit fishing because he didn’t want to hurt the fish. But he owned a BB gun, and taught his children how to shoot and practice gun safety. After Hupp’s brother shot and killed a dove, however, no one in the family ever used the gun again.

As a child, Hupp was a victim of careless gun use. When she was 11, she was fishing with her brother and some friends when one of the youths handed a pellet gun to another youth and it went off. Hupp has a two-inch-long scar near her right elbow where the pellet entered her skin and had to be dug out.

After getting a degree as a chiropractor in 1985, she moved to Houston. An assistant district attorney who was a patient suggested she carry a gun as self-defense in the big city.

She argued against it, partly because it was then illegal to carry a concealed weapon in Texas.

“Better to be tried by 12 than carried by six,” she recalls her patient advising her. Another friend gave her a pistol as a gift and taught her how to shoot it.

She carried it in her purse. But, afraid of losing her chiropractic license if she were arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, she often kept it beneath the passenger seat of her car.

That’s where it was, 150 feet from Hupp’s grasp, the day George Hennard burst into Luby’s. The what-ifs haunt her. Hennard stood barely 10 feet from her. He was up, she was down. She had clear aim. The upturned table would have steadied her hand. Though not a crack shot, she had hit smaller targets from farther distances.

“The point is, people like this–no, scumbags like this; I won’t put them in the people category–are looking for easy targets,” said Hupp. “That’s why we see things occurring at schools, post offices, churches and cafeterias in states that don’t allow concealed carrying.”

Nothing sways her. After the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, Hupp seemed to suggest that teachers should carry concealed weapons. She insists that what she said was something different:

“I wanted to know why the state treats teachers like second-class citizens, when plumbers and doctors are allowed to protect themselves on the job,” she said. “I would be happier sending my child to a school where a teacher whom I trust is armed and well prepared.”

She is equally oblique when talking about places where guns are banned. Even in Texas, which began allowing concealed weapons in 1996, guns are banned from several types of establishments, including churches, sports arenas, government offices, courts, airports and restaurants serving alcohol. Hupp refuses to say outright that she believes people should be allowed to carry guns to church. She picks her words carefully.

“We have created a shopping list for madmen,” she said. “If guns are the problem, why don’t we see things occurring at skeet and trap shoots, at gun shows, at NRA conventions? We only see it where guns aren’t allowed. The sign of a gun with a slash through it is like a neon sign for gunmen, ‘We’re unarmed. Come kill us.’ ”

To Hupp, the right to bear arms is a family issue. Her two sons will grow up learning to defend themselves with a gun. The elder son, 4, has been taught gun safety and has fired his first shot.

“A gun can be used to kill a family, or defend a family,” Hupp said. “I’ve lived what gun laws do. My parents died because of what gun laws do. I’m the quintessential soccer mom, and I want the right to protect my family. What happened to my parents will never happen again with my kids there.”

1st video brought to you by Ridley Report. Join the Free State Project & exercise your God-given freedom in New Hampshire!

It’s amazing how evil it is to abide by the Constitution and Bill Of Rights these days.  I’m moving to New Hampshire!  LIVE FREE OR DIE!

H/T Fat Libertarian/Libertarian Report

H/T Conservative Hideout

Newsflash: Dallas Texas August 4th 2009

In Dallas Texas, an unruly mob of right-wing thugs and malcontents crashed what should have been a civil town hall meeting presented by the AARP.  The Godless heathen usurpers caused the AARP representatives to run for their lives fearing for their own safety.  These wretched excuses of humanity were obviously a paid hit squad funded by the Republican party, and trained in one of Dick Cheney’s Nazi-Ninja-Deathsquad-Terrorist/Hunting camps.

What ever happened to “RESPECT YOUR ELDERS”?  Isn’t it odd that the “youth of today”, or as I tend to call them “Generation F**king Idiot”, sees the “elderly” as past-their-prime zombies drooling over their applesauce in a nursing home when they themselves are the zombie hoards following any little innane trend like lemmings.  “Obama wants healthcare and I voted for him cause the news told me to so it must be good” doesn’t cut it you idiots!  I had a 10 month break in service with the US Army, and during that time I went to (on the GI Bill), and dropped out of 2 colleges!  Would you like to know why?  BECAUSE TEENAGERS SENT TO COLLEGE ON MOMMY AND DADDY’S DIME ARE THE MOST WORTHLESS SHITBAGS ON THE PLANET!!!

Readers, I came into this new version of my blog promising myself that I would write as eloquently and swear-free even on issues that had me fit to kill.  My wife even commented on that fact when she read my posts.  Unfortunately, this is simply going to degenerate into a swearfest.  I’M FUCKING SICK OF THE WAY THIS NATION IS HEADED!

If you’ve been with me this far, you’ll dig the YouTube channel that will be created soon.  This “domestic terrorist” is going to pull out all the stops and not just tell you what I think using colorful language, but it will be done up right.  Wait till you see the background.

This was too good not to post. H/T Soylent Green via Conservative Hideout

That’s right America, this blog is funded by your tax dollars and by anyone kind enough to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights and buy a firearm from IMPACT GUNS.  Some bloggers make income from ads and things like books from Amazon.com, but I prefer to help you help yourselves (with an affiliate kickback for me) by buying a “tool of freedom“.  There is no “donation” button here.

I find it only fitting that those who wish to stifle my voice and views, while complaining that their 1st Amendment rights are being infringed, are directly responsible for paying me to do this.   It amuses me that my so-called “racist hate-speech” is funded in part by those who hate me and my ideas the most.  I don’t think of my monthly Veterans Affairs disability check as my just reward of serving my nation for 10 years, I consider it “political free speech welfare”, which I’m sure my biggest detractors can stand behind…  Well, at least the “welfare” bit, the “free speech” part is only when it suits them and their nefarious aims.

This brings me to government health care.  I get free US government health care.  My wife is Canadian and has free Canadian health care.  My wife is disgusted by the free health care the American government gives me.  Does anyone see a problem with that?

Let’s see what US government-run health care is like:

In early March my back slipped out of place (yet again) and I called for an appointment to my local VA Clinic.  Two and a half weeks later I got to go see the doctor and was scheduled for x-rays and an MRI at the VA medical center which is over an hour away.  Oh wait, my appointment for those scans were for the 14th of May.  Today on the 5th of August, I got to go see the doctor at the local VA clinic to get the results.  Strangely, with a history of chronic back problems documented since my 2nd of 10 years in the US Army, my back is just fine.

Stranger still, is the fact that last year when I was working in Korea as a contractor for the US Army, my back went out and I went to a Korean hospital (the same one that is listed to be the hospital the US President would be sent to in Seoul) and was seen instantly thanks to my private insurance.  The Korean doctor, trained and spending 8 years in practice in an American hospital, informed me just how bad my back was & that I was losing fluid in my spinal discs.

I love my free government health care.  It’s worked so well for myself and other Veterans.  Don’t believe me?  Just ask any Disabled Veteran.

Perhaps that is why I am writing what I have in this post, and why I hold no quarter for idiots like Lanny Davis (so-called Attorney & Democratic Strategist).

Giving credit where credit is due, these quotes come from Politico.com:

“The “shout downs” organized by the Republican right meet one of the classic definition of “fascist” tactics–defined as using shouting and disruption to deprive the civil and respectful debate of ideas. There is literally no defense to these tactics. I don’t criticize those who feel genuine anger or fear and show up to meetings to express those emotions. But I do call out the tactic of screaming and disrupting a meeting and the fact that this is a systematic tactic by thugs who want to prevent civil discourse, not promote it.”

Mr. Davis, do you feel the same way about the ORGANIZED leftists that “shouted down” the Republican nominees during the party debates?  Thugs you say? Like members of the Black Panther Party who stood outside of a polling place with billy-clubs?  It’s amazing that the claims you level against the “thugs” as you call them, come not only from the Republican party.  Among those “thugs” are Independents, Libertarians, and even Democrats (which you claim to be a “strategist” for).  Unfortunately for you Mr. Davis, among those “thugs” who “shouted down” the usurpers of the Constitution of the United States of America, there weren’t any actual Fascists in the crowd.  Perhaps you could be consoled by the fact that, more likely than not, there were, Socialists and Communists that you would so better be a mouthpiece for.

My apology Lanny, you ARE their mouthpiece!  How absurd of me to say differently.  This brings me to the part about why I mentioned that this blog is payed for by folks like Mr. Davis (and perhaps someday Tim Geithner & Charlie Rangel).

“Let’s have the media name names, publish photographs, and do interviews of those responsible for approving, even organizing these techniues. And let’s find an investigative journalist – are there many left – to prove these so-called grassroots shouters are, or are not, being paid.”

Guilty as charged Mr. Davis.  This Constitutional Libertarian “shouts down” the Constitution usurping members of the slave-master government and is paid to do it…BY YOU and your ilk Mr. Davis!  Do you honestly think Ron Paul directly pays me to love my Freedom?  Did Ron Paul pay me to sacrifice 10 years of my life and ultimately my physical & mental health to defend this nation?   I was in “Clinton’s Army”.  Bill Clinton sent me to “The Sandbox”, not Goerge W. Bush (you know, the guy who gave you a job in 2005 as one of the members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board as part of the Intelligence Reform Act.  That worked pretty well, my civil liberties weren’t taken away!).

Prove me wrong Lanny Davis!  Show me one case where you were outraged at your ultra-leftist friends like MoveOn & CodePink who would “shout down” those evil Republicans even before the GOP picked a candidate to represent the party for President!

If you have children Mr. Davis, are they like the opening of the Jim Carry movie Liar Liar?  “What does your father do?” “He’s a liar.” “Oh, you mean lawyer…”

Before I forget, I sincerely appreciate your advocation of the infringement of the 1st Amendment rights of the American people, no matter what their political affiliation.  Do you still have your Civil Liberties Oversight Board job?

Any of my fine readers can read Lanny Davis’ full opinion at Politico.com here.

The American people of all walks of life are waking up.  Party affiliation is being swept aside in a long overdue fight against an insanely bloated government comprised of both parties that seeks nothing more than to rule over the people.  The people are arming themselves with facts and reading the documents that their would-be overlords in Congress fail to do before signing into law.

Freedom-loving Americans are starting to fight back against those who have chosen bondage and government enslavement.

Now the “happiness in slavery” crowd and their look-down-their-nose political masters are attacking this so-called “mob” that threatens their grip on power.  The quote “Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it” should be the new government tagline.  They are pushing the American people towards replacing their protest signs with torches and pitchforks.  Are the slave-masters in Washington DC feeling so self-important and above recrimination that they can gleefully shirk their responsibility to their constituants?  Judged by their actions and public disdain for those they seek to rule, is the answer not blatantly obvious?

In my 33 years of life, I have never seen my beloved nation in such a state of disrepair.  I cannot help but wonder if the current of disgust, distrust, and anger that flows through our nation today was felt the same way by our forefathers who would eventually march to revolution.  The American people are justly enraged over their representation without representation.